The Observations Read Online Free PDF Page B

your woman sees you trespassing on her land.”
    He glanced over his shoulder to see who was coming then slipped his hands in his pockets and stood there whistling and looking about him, for dear sake butter wouldn’t melt.
    “Missus,” I says. “I mean marm. This boy is bothering me. He’s followed me here and he’s nought but a pest.”
    The missus looked at the boy. “Is this true, Hector?” she says.
    Hector?
    He give me a sly wink very pleased with himself so he was, the scut. Then he turned to the missus. “Ach no, Mrs.. Reid,” he says. “Not a tall. Hi fwhas chust hasking this brazen creature fwhat she fwas doing stealing your heggs—hand then she threw fwhun at me!”
    He adopted a face of such innocence you would have swore he was a saint. Well I was fit to be tied. “Liar!” I says and would have went on but missus interrupted me.
    Hector, this is Bessy,“ she says. ”The new maid.“
    Och is that right now?“ His eyes widened but he was not really surprised, I could tell a faker a mile off. ”A new maid?“ he says. ”Fwhell, fwhell.“ And he looks me up and down like I was a cow at auction.
    “This is Hector,” says the missus to me. “He helps us out on the estate. He’s around here all the time for one reason or another.”
    Needless to say I was not best pleased at this news. I looked
him
up and down like he was a big long streak of what you might find in a thunder mug of a morning.
    “How is your tooth, Hector?” the missus asks him.
    “Fwait till you see the hole,” he says and he stuck his dirty great finger in his mouth to pull back his lip just as he’d kept doing the day before. Missus hid her eyes behind her hand and who could blame her.
    “I have no desire to see it,” she says. All I want to know is whether it was a successful operation.“
    The boy plucked his finger from his mouth and wiped it on his sleeve.
    “Hit fwas hindeed, marm,” he says. “Hit came hout fwhith a great wrench, the sound hof it fwhas chust like huprooting potatoes.”
    “Oh dear,” she says and made a face. “Well you must get back to work.”
    The boy give her a little bow and then give me a deeper satirical one and with another sly wink he was off and running out the yard, I don’t know about uprooting potatoes but you could certainly have grown them between his toes.
    The missus turned to me. “
Was
he bothering you?” she says.
    “Only somewhat, marm,” I says. “Nothing I can’t deal with by myself.”
    “Good for you,” she says. “But do try and do it without throwing eggs.” She smiled at me. “That was a pretty song you were singing earlier. I don’t think I heard it before.”
    “No, marm,” I says. “It’s one I made up in my own head.”
    “Indeed?” she says. “You are clever.” And then she reached out quickly and stroked my cheek. “What are you thinking of, Bessy?” she says.
    “Marm? Nothing marm. I wasn’t thinking anything.”
    In actual fact I was thinking how given a chance I could split that Hectors head like a pea shod. But I didn’t want to say that in case she thought wrong of me.
    “I’m sure that’s not the case,” says the missus. “We are always thinking something, every one of us. Never mind. How many eggs did you get?”
    “9—well—8,” I says.
    “Good girl.” She smiled at me most kind, then turned and went back into the house. I watched her go.
    What are you thinking of?
What a thing to say. In my entire life, nobody had ever asked me such a question.
    For the rest of the morning she showed me some of the things I had to do about the place then after lunch she sent me down to Snatter to buy scones. Snatter was the nearest village there, which to begin with made me laugh every time I heard it talked about for it sounded like a thing that came shooting out your nose. When it was time to go missus took me down behind the vegetable garden and pointed out the quickest way, down a track in a field called Cowburnhill and then